Chocolate wedding cakes make

Wedding cake number 2 (chocolate) is made - eek!
Only six weeks to go now so my blogging might be a bit sporadic from now on!

Wedding cake - fruit cake

The first real wedding cake, not a tester, has been made :) This is the one the guests will eat - eeek! 

The fruit cake needs to sit for a few months to develop its flavour and so we can feed it with brandy so ive made it 2 months ahead of the wedding. This is the one im not decorating myself so the caterer also wanted ti made sooner rather than later.

I made a 30cm cake mix but baked it in a 23cm tin as i wanted it tall rather than wide. Just make sure you 23cm tin has tall side or add extra lining paper above the tin height to contain the mixture while its cooking.

I used this recipe but swapped the raisins for dates and apricots as that's what my mum likes :) I also left out the treacle as i prefer a blonder fruit cake. I doesn't look like it from the picture but the middle will be fairly pale in colour for a fruit cake. Its all feeling very real now...

Practise Wedding Cakes

I had a practise run for my wedding cakes!
Im making 4, the fruit cake isnt shown as someone else is decorating that

This is them with their crumb coat - they always look so cute like this i think, all new and yummy!




This is the red velvet with toasted marshmallow frosting. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of this one cut - doh! Its totally the most dramatic :(
Anyway i used this Nigella recipe for red velvet cupcakes, just made it as a cake, and this marshmallow frosting. I spread the frosting smoothly on the sides and then piped little mini meringues on the top and then toasted it all with a blow torch

The chocolate fudge cake - by far the most popular! Its a fab recipe, again by Nigella, which ive been making for years. i love it because it isnt too sweet, and it has a really fudgey texture without being heavy. This one is topped with basic chocolate butter cream piped as roses. Its really just a swirl, piped with a large star tip nozzle. Its really easy but looks like its really complicated!

Any finally this is a lemon cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream
Yet again, a nigella recipe, i just doubled the quantities for her Lemon Drizzle cake. The topped it with this amazing swiss meringue buttercream. Ive never made it before and it does take a little while but it sreally delicious, and very stable, which i great for a summer wedding. This was supposed to be a little better finished off but i ran out of steam somewhat on the third cake! Something to consider when making the real things...



Makes me hungry just remembering them!

Cake toppers - crochet hearts

 

More cake toppers! Little crochet hearts (pattern here) stuck on wire, i used a bit if glue to fix them to the wire otherwise they spun round like weather vane!

 

I also remade the wire word cake topper, with long legs to stick it into the cake this time

Heres the whole selection! Well theres actually one more (4 cakes, i know, a bit ridiculous!) but number 4 isnt finished yet - watch this space!

Mini Bunting Cake Topper

Another cake topper! (I'm having multiple wedding cakes)

Isnt it cute! Its just some thick cotton thread sandwiched between triangles, a bit fiddly as theyre so tiny, but well worth the effort. I then split the top 1cm of 2 wooden skewers and slotted the thread in those. Im definitely using this on one of my cakes - yay!

Wire words cake topper

More wedding stuff trialling! Tried my hand at making a wire word cake topper. I love the effect but i forgot to give any of them legs so i can stick it in the cake!! I used 3mm aluminium wire, which is pretty thick and tougher to bend than i thought, so i had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to do most of it. I think i might use slightly thinner wire, 2 or 2.5mm, when i make the final one, so its slightly easier to handle. Just need to decide what style lettering to so, i think the one at the bottom is my fav, love that curly 'e'!

Spotted Dick for Lovely BM

 

Now i hate dried fruit, its one of my least favourite things, but lovely BM loves spotted dick so, like a good girlfriend, i put my issues aside to make him one! Its a proper traditional one, covered in a muslin and steamed in boiling water, i used this recipe by James Martin, i just halved the ingredients to make a mini version. According to lovely BM it was delicious :)

Cake Tin Shelf

  

It always annoys me when i make biscuits or cupcakes with soft icing and i can only fit one layer in a tin - its such a waste of space! So i decided to add a shelf into one if my plastic tins. I screwed 4 screws, one on each side, in the sides, halfway between the top. Then rested a bit of cardboard covered in tinfoil on the screws. Now it has double the capacity - good times!

Chocolate Swirl buns

Ive been dying to make these for ages and had a great excuse the other week as i returned to my 'proper' job after a year on secondment to a different department. These were my 'im back!' cakes :) They were easier than i thought they would be to make and by goodness were they yummy. I liked them because they were chocolatey but not too sweet and when theyre warm out of the oven they are fabulous! The recipe is from the always delicious Smitten Kitchen

Banana Bread

My sister is vising from Australia at the moment and, as theyre massively into Banana Bread out there, i decided to make her some, so she felt more at home! Its really not a bread its a cake but you can eat it toasted with butter which is probably where the bread name comes from, i prefer it on its own though.

I used this recipe by A Beach Cottage and it was lovely, i didnt manage to get the dark but still soft outer layer like they do in Australia (any tips?) but it still tasted pretty good!

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Do you every see a recipe on your blog feed or on Pinterest and you're buying the ingredients before you know what your doing! That's what happened with this post by Bakerella. Lovely BM and I were eating sticky toffee pudding before the day was out! It was exceptional :)

Speckled birds egg chocolate cake with whipped buttercream and nutella butter cream

It was my birthday recently and i like to make a cake for the folks at work each year. This year i decided to combine a few techniques i'd been wanting to try out. The folks at work never mind being my guinesa pigs!

So i started with my go to chocolate cake recipe by Nigella Lawson -its brilliant you must try it.
And added nutella butter cream as the filling. When i saw nutella buttercream on pinterest i couldnt believe id never though of it before - such a brilliant idea!


I also used the nutella butter cream as the crumb coat. Id never crumb coated before but as my icing was going to be pale and my cake was dark i thought it would be a good idea.



I let that chill for a couple of hours and then i made my whipped butter cream topping. I find butter cream too heavy and quite sickly so i was very pleased to find this whipped butter cream recipe from Can you Stay for Dinner. It really is a winner, almost mousse like in texture, so much lighter than regular buttercream and nowhere near as sickly.
So i covered my cake with the delicious topping, coloured a pale blue in anticipation of the next step.


I fell in love with this speckled egg cake from The Cake Blog the minute i saw it and have been dying to make one for ages. So i gently speckled the cake with cocoa and water and this was the result. The picture genuinely doesnt do it justice. It was so pretty, even with my slightly dodgy cake decorating skills! I would definitely make the icing darker next time, i was worried about it looking too fake but i should have gone the whole hog and made it blue instead of pale blue!

Everyone at work loved it and it all got eaten - the biggest compliment of all!

Lovely BM's birthday cake

Happy Birthday Lovely BM!!! I've finally found a cake he loves!

Rice krispie cakes

Nom nom nom - how i love these :)

The pink ones are rice crispies in melted marshmallow and the others are choccie ones. They didnt last long thats for sure!

Christmas cake

I knows its nowhere near Christmas anymore but i love making Christmas cake so i wanted to make sure it got a mention on here :)



I dont really follow a recipe, i just make a brown sugar sponge and add whatever fruit i fancy that year. The little clay people are form Lakeland about 10 years ago, they've survived very well!

Makes i like this week 12-Jun-12

Guinness chocolate at call me cupcake (yum yum)

Star wars baby blanket squares over at Angel Fire

Adorable kids rugs at Running with Scissors

Gorgeous glitter wire ideas at Oh Happy Day

Tin Can Cakes

I thought these little tin can cakes at Oh Happy Day were so cute i wanted to see if i could make them too.
I used this Chocolate cake recipe by Nigella Lawson (US version here), which i love - not too sweet and really fudgey. So i put the mix into my cans, baked them and happily, all went well!

 I turned them out ok, which I was worried about. I had greased and floured the inside and put greaseproof at the bottom. Im just not sure i like the ridged edge the cans give the cake... need to try and find smooth sided cans.

I cut the uneven top off (yum i love eating the scraps!), cut them in to 3 and then frosted them. I was practising my frosting so i used a few different techniques.

I think theyre pretty cute, some issues need ironing out but theres definitely potential here :)